William Francis Holcomb
American
1831 – 1909
William Francis "Bill" Holcomb was an American prospector and bear hunter who discovered placer gold in May 1860 in the San Bernardino Mountains valley that now bears his name, setting off Southern California's largest gold rush. He later held county office and died in 1909.
Biography
William Francis Holcomb was born on January 27, 1831, in Tippecanoe County, Indiana. He joined the California Gold Rush as a young man in 1849–50, mining in the northern camps before drifting south. In 1859 he arrived in Bear Valley, high in the San Bernardino Mountains, where he earned a reputation as a crack shot and grizzly bear hunter.
In May 1860, while tracking a wounded bear north of Bear Valley, Holcomb found placer gold in the mountain valley that soon bore his name. On May 5, 1860, he and fellow prospector Ben Ware recorded five claims at the San Bernardino County recorder's office, and the rush was on. Holcomb Valley became the scene of the largest gold rush in Southern California history, and its boomtown, Belleville, briefly rivaled San Bernardino in size; Holcomb served as the camp's first justice of the peace.
Holcomb married Nancy Stewart in 1860 and settled in San Bernardino, where he later held public office — elected county assessor in 1871, reportedly the first Republican elected to office in San Bernardino County, and county clerk in 1882. In the 1870s he set down his recollections of the discovery at the request of the San Bernardino Pioneer Society, leaving one of the best firsthand records of the rush. He died in 1909, remembered as "Grizzly Bill" Holcomb, the bear hunter who opened the mountains he had hunted.